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EDITORIAL

Press Mulroney on jobs

Even before being sworn in as prime minister, Brian
Mulroney was confiding to the U.S. magazine News-
week, that he would soon invite U.S. President Reagan
for an informal visit. If this kind of indecent haste is a
fair example of Mulroney’s sense of priorities it is at very
least high-handed. At worst it is flaunting the big Tory
electoral win as a licence to sell Canada to the U.S.
multinationals, whose chief puppet is Ronald Reagan.

Mulroney made it clear during the campaign, as this
paper pointed out, that he intends to commit Canada to
Reagan’s policies. On foreign policy, human rights,
reactionary economic policy, the Ottawa Tories are
determined to serve the corporate elite at home and
abroad.

It should come as no surprise that the labor-hating
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher quickly sent
her warm congratulations, and that Reagan paused in
his own election campaign to telephone the man who
won for reaction.

The New York Times, noting that “seven of the
largest Western democracies will now be ruled by the

political right,”. counts on Mulroney “to restrain the
nationalism that has for so long discouraged foreign
investment and skewed energy policy.”

Time magazine put Mulroney on its cover and said
bluntly that his victory “‘is of major importance for the
U.S.” Said Newsweek magazine: “The outcome was
good news for the Reagan administration. ..Mulroney’s
government will be pro-business and pro-American.”

This is not to say that the fightback, like the election,
is over. On the contrary, the working class and its allies
now need to sharpen the fight against Tory policies.
While Mulroney has yet to reveal his real intentions, his
plan for vast military increases and accommodation of
the U.S. is well known. And the spokesmen for finance
capital are lining up to tell Mulroney that cutting social
programs to reduce the deficit should be the first order
of business.

The working people will need to put up a fierce fight
to keep their gains and win more, and they can start by
telling Mulroney their demands for policies for jobs,
peace and the maintenance of social programs.

The Pope and the media

Usually when a foreign politician visits Canada, his
or her words are weighed critically by the media. This is
no less so if the person is a head of state. When the
visitor offers advice freely about how the country should
be run, what laws should or should not be in operation,
and how the people of Canada should order their lives,
a Critical analysis by the media, by various levels of
government and by numerous other institutions
becomes a certainty.

Not so in the case of Pope John Paul II. It is as if the
media and the persons and institutions ordinarily given
to making evaluations have surrendered their right to
make judgments. There is, instead, an endless marvel-
ling at the show biz with which the Pope has been
surrounded.

Yes, yes, of course, he is not only a politician and a
head of state; he is also the head of the Roman Catholic
church. But surely no one pretends that his visit is for
the mere churchly matters which concern religious
people.

We are in Canada after all. We have just been
through two political leadership conventions and a fed-
eral election. We’ve seen the merchandising of politi-
cians till it’s coming out our ears. We know how they
must play to all sorts of different constituencies. They
all love children. They all sympathize with the Native
people. They all lament about unemployment. They all
bristle at the indignities to women. And they

all — speaking of the ruling class — refuse to allow
change.

Pope John Paul II is an able politician and he follows

the rules.

Some of his assertions are bound to receive approval
far beyond his own followers. For example, his appar-
ent endorsement of the Canadian bishops’ statement of

New Year 1983 ashe called for “‘a restructuring of ~

economy” to overcome the plague of mass unemploy-
ment expresses the view of the most forward-looking
sections of labor.

On the other hand, the Pope travels with a lot of
baggage — past deeds and statements, approaches
which are an affront to many Canadians, such as his
archaic attitude toward women, his persistent fight
against the separation of church and state, his role in
undermining the liberation movements, and in seeking
to sabotage social advance as in Poland.

It is clear that his visit to Canada is not a simple
religious pilgrimage any more than it is solely a great
show biz and retailers’ spectacular. It is a political act
which, whatever else it achieves, should warm the hearts
of religious obscurantists like Ronald Reagan, for
whom religious coercion is a factor in maintaining
imperialism. ;

Given the potential for debate in the situation, it is
sad that the media have shut off their analytical faculties
for the duration.

“If the pope were to visit one of the (South
African) missions tomorrow, he would
certainly not be offered as much as a glass of

. ~ water.”’

. — Five black South African Catholic
priests and a black bishop respond to the
pope’s reception of South African prime

minister Pieter Botha in the Vatican.

— Catholic New Times |

Profiteer of the week

_ Among banks Montreal City and District Savings Bank, Montre-

al, is not one of the giants. Even so, as banks will, it has managed |

to cut a nice slice of profit out of the money it handles. For the nine
months ended July 31, after tax profit rose to $20,359,000 from
$19,829,000 in the same period a year earlier.

IRIBUNE

Editor — SEAN GRIFFIN
Assistant Editor — DAN KEETON
Business & Circulation Manager — PAT O'CONNOR
Graphics — ANGELA KENYON

Published weekly at 2681 East Hastings Street
Vancouver, B.C. V5K 1Z5
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Second class mail registration number 1560

twas predictable, of course, that Socred
Municipal Affairs Minister Bill Ritchie
would wade right in to the debate over

People and Issues

various movements in Burnaby, Campbell
River, and his current home in White
Rock, site of several activities against the

Vancouver’s upcoming referendum on
cruise missile testing — and would follow
his political co-religionists, the Civic Non-
Partisan Association, in condemning the
proposed plebiscite as “asinine” and a
waste of money. :

He also echoed the NPA’ers’ weary
argument that the council had no business
“messing around in international affairs.”

But what is really burning Ritchie’s
shorts is not that money is being spent ona
referendum — after all, it was only a cou+
ple of years ago that Socred buck-passing
forced municipalities to hold repeated ref-
erendums on Sunday shopping — or that
it is discussing issues that have implica-
tions beyond Boundary Road.

What really irks the municipal affairs
minister — and his cabinet cronies — is
that a majority of council members is com-
ing down on the peace side of the global
disarmament debate, a side not occupied
by the Socred leadership.

The point is obvious: the COPE and
independent aldermen want to give Van-
couver citizens an opportunity for a
democratic vote on one of the vital issues
for all Canadians, whether they live in
Vancouver or St. John’s; the Socreds
would deny them that vote. But worse
than that, those same Socreds have been
quietly courting the very people who are
the authors of increased east-west tension.

Consider the record.

It was only two years ago, in November,

1982, that the Ministry of Economic
Development co-hosted, together with the
U.S. Defence Department, an unprece-
dented seminar on how B.C. business
could get into the growing military market
created by Reagan’s arms spending. Later,
it was revealed that B.C. universities were
doing research for the U.S. military —
unbeknownst to the public.

But the capper was the special dinner
appearance — for the $150-a-plate shin-
dig organized by the Young Socreds — of
former Reagan secretary of state, former
NATO commander, former National
Security adviser Alexander Haig.

Since they brought him here, we can
only assume that the Socreds also take
their policy cue from Haig. And his policy
message was vintage Cold War stuff: he
defended Reagan’s massive rearmament
policy, praised his anti-communist and
anti-Soviet rhetoric and accused of para-
noia those western European countries
which voiced concern over the deploy-
ment of cruise and Pershing II missiles.
Several cabinet ministers were among the
audience.

When it comes to “messing in interna-
tional affairs’, the Socreds do that as
much as anyone — but as Haig’s meeting

demonstrated, they mess with the wrong ©

crowd, with those who are at odds with the
overwhelming majority of citizens who

have voted by plebiscite for disarmament -

(and remember, the Socreds were opposed

to those referendums, too).

_ The greatest outcome to the November
vote would be a resounding “‘yes”’ vote to
urge Ottawa to cancel the cruise tests —
and an equally resounding vote against the
likes of those who would deny people the
right to vote for peace.

* * *

a aan of the peace movement —
unselfish and modest as many of them
are — still could use a little recognition
now and then. In that spirit, we’re told, the
members and supporters of the Fraser Val-
ley Peace Council gathered Sept. 9 to pay
tribute to long-time peace activist John
Tanche.

John, a White Rock resident whose
activities for peace and socialism span six
decades of his 85 years, was the guest of
honor at a special birthday party spon-
sored by the council and Tanche’s
colleagues. :

Born in France in 1899, John was seven
when his family emigrated to Sylvan Lake,
Alta., in 1906, to try their hand at farming
in a socialist co-operative. Those early
socialist beginnings were instrumental,
friend and labor historian Ben Swankey,
noted ina tribute, to John’s decision to join
the Young Communist League in 1923.

That same commitment led him to the
peace movement’ in which he became
active upon moving to this province in
1943, and kept him in a leading role in the

nearby U.S. Trident submarine base in

Bangor, Wash.
Among the well wishers at John’s 85th

were peace colleagues Bette Pepper, Fraser

Valley Peace Council president Bev :
Gidora, and friend Olga Knowlson, who |

paid tribute with an original song honor-
ing the veteran of the peace struggle.

* * *

e had asad note from former Co-op
Bookstore manager Osmo Lahti last *
week, telling us that his father Aate (Ed)

Lahti passed away in Burnaby Hospital |

Aug. 27 at the age of 83. :

Born in Karstula, Finland Sept. 24,
1900, he began his working life early, join-
ing the river drives in the logging industry
at the age of 13. Nine years later following —
one of the many waves of Finnish immi-
grants who made their way into this coun-
try’s resource industries, he immigrated to
Canada. :

Silicosis contracted in the Northern
Manitoba mines — an industrial disease
for which he would wait 50 years for
compensation — finally forced him to
quit mining and in 1946 he went into log-
ging as a hand faller and bucker, continu-
ing in the industry on Vancouver Island
until his retirement. There, as in the mines,
he was an active rank-and-file unionist.

He was a long-time supporter of the
Tribune as wel! as the progressive Finnish’
language press. ~ .

4 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, SEPTEMBER 19, 1984